


Strange Things Did Happen Here (No Stranger Did They Seem)

by TheDameintheRaininMaine



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, artist!Clarke, healing romancing and comfort through music, how bout that?, lots of details have been jossed since then, my version ended up way less bloody, started writing this before the finale aired
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 07:12:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3887068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDameintheRaininMaine/pseuds/TheDameintheRaininMaine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the defeat at Mount Weather, Clarke deals with the events, the implications of help received, and is disturbed by her own ambivalence toward then the new peace. </p><p>Then she begins to receive notes left in a tree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange Things Did Happen Here (No Stranger Did They Seem)

Clarke stays outside Mount Weather for hours it seems. 

She sits at some point. 

Daybreak comes, she stays. 

The next day, the hazmat suited soldiers come with the remains of the sky people taken from the raid on Camp Jaha. Bellamy, her mother, everyone. 

She doesn't even resist when they drag her along with them. 

She's numb. She feels like it would be better if she were enraged. She would have energy then, fight. But now, Clarke just feels drained. 

The walls of the mountain structure enclose on her, consume her. 

She doesn't even care when they string her and the others up in the medbay. 

Raven and Wick are on her side, god, they shouldn't have even been in any danger, they were techs. But here they were, down here anyway, and this is her doing...

Finn died for this, and look where they ended up anyway. Dragged into hell, just like him. 

She hears Bellamy whispering frantically, and wakes up a bit. 

She glances around, there's one guard, and he's not paying close attention. 

Bellamy seems rushed, and she hears him say "GO, NOW"

It's then that the figure next to him (Clarke had thought it was Harper at first, but no, that's not right) lets out a yell, followed by a sickening crunch.

The figure moves on the guard who has jumped up from his chair and silences him with a squeeze to the neck in a few seconds. 

Echo, the grounder Bellamy had gone back for. Clarke laughed bitterly. Of course the Mountain Men wouldn't remember her. Wouldn't realize there was someone there who shouldn't be. 

She also realizes when she sees the other woman's hand what happened. She'd broken the bones in her thumb to slip through the cuffs. 

Echo rummages through the guards pockets for the keys, and then removes a small envelope from under her tunic. 

"I was only able to take enough for a few people. I already took some, I have enough to make three more people walking sickness for a few days". 

Clarke barks out a laugh, understanding. 

Bellamy is the one cognizant enough for human speech. 

"Give it to me, I gave you the idea". 

Clarke finally finds her voice again. 

"Split the rest between me and Octavia. She's immune, she won't show symptoms at all, and the rest of us will sicken soon after". 

She glances across the room and tries to catch Octavia's eye. 

"That fine with you O?"

A slight nod is her response. The younger girl's face is stalwart, unreadable.

"I'll make these bastards wish they were never born". 

When she comes around to give Clarke her share of the pungent powder, she also slips something in her front pocket. 

"Don't think about it now, wait until we are free". 

And so while Echo slips her restraints back on, Clarke lets the thought go. 

It takes a few days for the toxin to take hold. 

They take Raven first. Clarke and Wick shout themselves hoarse when they do. She holds up, as strong as ever in the face of the guards. But none of them can ignore her pained moans when they are done. 

Bellamy next, then Monty, then Abby (they just had to, they had to make Clarke watch her mother drained). 

They all hold up, weary, but waiting. 

They take Harper last, and she doesn't survive. They drilled too hard over the old incision, her bone shatters, and they can't stop the blood loss. 

It's that night that the blood starts to run from Clarke's eyes, and if that isn't some kind of cosmic irony, than she doesn't know what is. 

It spreads like wildfire. It makes sense. The mountain men have no immunity to anything from the outside. A few of the kids who had had it when Murphy brought it stay well enough to nurse the others. 

The battle is won almost immediately. Clarke hardly gets to see any of it, spending it prostate in bed, miserable and terrified, quarantining the sick and immune from the uninfected as well as possible. 

It doesn't work well. Abby and Raven both are infected. Abby is confused and far moee frightened than the rest, and Clarke does her best to console the mother she wished she had appreciated more. 

Raven mostly curses everyone's name. Wick busts her chops, but holds her hand all the way through it. 

Echo and Octavia move silently through the tunnels and hallways, capturing and restraining whoever stands in their way. A small group of the other grounders had returned with Echo, and they let them in to help. It's not needed.

Some resist. Some of them are killed. But Maya and the adults who sheltered the 47 are spared, save some fear and discomfort. 

Cage Wallace, stricken and weakened to the point of not being able to move, never gives in. The knife to the throat almost seems too kind. 

And just like that, it's over. 

*********

Later that night, when Clarke is laying awake in her cot beside the others, that she finally looks at the paper Echo gave her before all the chaos. 

It's the size of a large leaf on a tree, and clearly aged. 

On one side, is a crude drawing that Clarke still recognizes as one of the mountain violets that grow in the area. 

The words are crudely shaped, written by a hand that doesn't much, but still legible. Legible, but still cutting. 

Not you. Never you

And Clarke lets herself sob

***********

The mountain is raided for supplies. The dead are buried. The injured are nursed. The orphaned children are fostered. 

Echo, Lincoln, and the other escaped mountain prisoners who came back for them stay. 

Lincoln informs them, that there is little hope that they would ever be accepted back with their people. 

The cold mountain is savior to them. It shelters them during that first harsh winter. 

Spring comes. Life goes on. The remains of the camp settle atop the mountain that holds so many dead. 

The Sky People maintain a safe distance from any where that seems to be claimed by the Trigedakru. Safe, generous borders. The groups skirt around each other. 

Some have suggested they move into the remains of the mountain with those still living there. The very thought sickens Clarke. She never wants to go under the ground again if her life depended on it. 

She has to sometimes. The mountain has too many tools. Too many paths that have to be cut off. The medical supplies and facilities alone keep them dependent. They strip it of weapons, render it defenseless. 

When he's well, and Abby has collaborated with the remaining doctors and read up enough to perform the procedure safely, Jasper willingly donates his marrow to Maya. 

"Proper marrow transplants are actually very safe for the donor" Abby says grimly as she preps Jasper for the procedure "There was never a need for all this savagery". 

"The need was we had it and they wanted it. They never thought of us at all". Clarke replies, preparing to anaesthetize the drill site. 

Maya never wants to leave the sunlight. It's not like she has anything to tether her to the underground anymore. She mourns her father, she says, by appreciating the life she has because of him. She explores the fields and trees with glee. Clarke treats her for sunburns on three separate occasions the first two months alone. 

Many of the mountain men do find willing donors eventually. The rest live in the remains, skulking the shadows. 

Echo and the others train them in combat and the ways of the land. Octavia participates only from the sidelines. She won't go near the borders, won't even talk of her time spent as a warrior. She still carries her knife, and sticks close to Lincoln, eyes wary. 

Clarke begins participating eventually. Echo's a good teacher, not nearly as harsh as most of the grounder generals had been. She's a good peace time teacher. 

It's after one of the sparring sessions, when Clarke is busy patching her wounds, that Echo asks her if she had read the paper she'd given her back under the mountain. 

She avoids eye contact. 

"So what if I did? It's not like it changes anything". 

Echo studies her for a moment. 

"Did you ever wonder why it was so easy for me to leave my people behind? I spent so many years in that cage. I was still only a second when I was taken. All of my memories of that time seem so distant now. I do remember Lexa though". 

The other woman uses her given name, rather than her title, which startles Clarke. 

"We were very close in age. Did our schooling together, were taken as seconds the same summer. No one knew she was the commander then, but when we did, it made sense. She was a leader even then. Always took care of everyone around her. She was skilled, and smart, but it was that that I always remembered."

Echo sits, lost in the memory. 

"When we were twelve, the two of us and a few others were sent on a hunting party. We got separated from the group, and were soon to be lost. It took us three days to find our way back to the village. It was late autumn, so it was bitter cold. There was no game to be found in the area, and most of the edible plants had about dried up for the year. We had only a small amount of food."

If Clarke didn't know better she would say the woman was about to cry. 

"When we returned, she collapsed. It was then that the rest of us realized that she had not been taking any of our supplies for herself. She had been the one telling us to eat, that it wasn't so bad, that we would all be fine. Chastising us for complaining. Providing for and reassuring us at her own expense." 

"When the rest of escaped the mountain, I had not seen her in years. But I saw the same girl underneath." 

She catches Clarke's eye. 

"The woman you know is hard, no doubt. Hard and unforgiving. But she is still the girl I knew. Relentless and uncompromising, but with an incredibly fierce heart". 

Clarke finally speaks. 

"A heart that she refuses to listen to". 

Echo laughs roughly.

"You might find someday, that the heart is immovable. The head on the other hand, can be...persuaded." 

She picks up her things, and leaves Clarke alone with one more thought. 

"That sickness is one of my people's most protected weapons. We would have never been able to obtain it without Heda knowing. She made her decision and would have never wavered. But that doesn't mean that she left no way for you to be helped. Just that she couldn't be the one to do it". 

*************

Time goes on. 

Clarke finds that her input in running the camp is becoming less and less necessary. 

Kane and her mother may have been poorly suited for war strategists, but they are fair and just in peacetime. 

Old prejudices are setting back in though. 

During meal times, she notices Echo and the others getting looks akin to fear from some of her people. Someone in a meeting says something about their savagery. Even Kane occasionally casts doubt on their trustworthiness, though she hopes it to be out of caution rather than malice. 

And most people are growing even more skittish about the lands that skirt the borders. 

Clarke likes it this way. 

Without the pressure of leading, she's taken to studying the medical literature rescued from Mount Weather, in hopes of freeing up more of Abby's time. 

And she's started drawing again. 

She takes her sketchbook and wanders the borders. Though taboo to the others, she has little fear. She carries her knife, but has never encountered anyone from the outside. And if the wildlife decides they want her? She'll put up a fight. 

She once led an army to war, now she spends her days wandering. 

One day, she climbs a large split tree and sits to sketch. It's a perfect perch. 

She sketches the meadow, and the plants. She sketches how the sun filters through the branches. She even manages to make the sketch convey the emptiness she feels in it. 

With a sickening rush, Clarke realizes that this tree is exactly the same type they strung up Jasper in, the sane type of meadow. 

Oh well. It's not like it could same the same tree, Clark reasons. She doesn't feel the need to give superstitious power to anything, no matter the memories they may bring. 

So she sits, and she draws. 

It shouldn't be this easy to get away so often, but Clarke is beginning to feel like this new world is phasing her out. 

And so while she is feeling less and less useful in it, she commits her new world to paper. 

She draws the clutch of tents that are slowly being converted to simple wooden houses. She draws the remains of the Ark, its shiny metal surface growing over with weeds. She draws the river, and the meadows, and the paths, free of people other than her. 

She draws Octavia, newly swollen with child, somehow both glowing and terrified. Accidental, Abby had put it when she confirmed the diagnosis, did not necessarily mean unwanted. She draws Lincoln trying to reassure her that they would do their best. She draws Bellamy hoisting Octavia in celebration, trying to give her any of his confidence. 

She draws the other healers in training gathered around a man injured in an accident that they could not help. She even draws Kane and her mother, his hand on her shoulder, as she saw them one night after supper and was hit with the sudden sense that she should look away. 

Clarke would be loathe to admit it, but she draws Lexa too. She draws her once in full battle armor on her throne, but mostly she draws her how she was being chased by Pauna. Striped bare, frightened, saddened. She drew how she had looked after she kissed her. Anything she can remember of the emotions that the world, and her, had managed to wrought out of the stoic commander. 

One day, she swears she sees the back of Lexa's head across the meadow. 

She knows that's stupid, that it couldn't possibly be. But that doesn't stop it from keeping her awake in her tent that night. 

(Clarke would be loathe to admit that the memory of Lexa, of the ghosts of her touch on her skin, has kept her awake more than it's share). 

The next time she comes to the tree, there's a small piece of paper stuck to the trunk by an arrow. 

Clarke snaps into defense mode, scanning the trees for any signs of movement. 

But there is nothing, as there is always. 

She opens the rolled up paper. It's browned with age, but the words written on it are new, and clear. 

Clarke stares at them for a minute, before she recognizes them as lines from an old earth song. 

"Yesterday a child came out to wonder/Caught a dragonfly inside a jar/Fearful when the sky was full of thunder/And tearful at the falling of a star. "

She whispers the lyrics, trying to remember how the rest of it went. She remembers it as being one that her father would sing sometimes. Earth music and art had been a well loved subject in school, but her memory has faded. 

The only thing that comes to her is a deep, pervasive ache. The lyrics, the memory of her father, the lingering traces of Lexa in her mind. 

(Why is she thinking about her now, of all times?)

Clarke turns the arrow over in her hand. It's a lightweight but very sharp. Exactly like the arrows all of the grounders had used. All the ones that they had encountered anyway. 

Something seizes up inside Clarke, something nagging and familiar. She takes her pencil, tears out a piece of her sketch paper, and writes this down; 

"I'm on your side, oh, when times get rough/And friends just can't be found/Like a bridge over troubled water/I will lay me down"

She knows this one by heart. It was a lullaby on the Ark, one that for some reason always made her cry. 

She grabs the arrow and uses it to fix the note back to the tree in the same place she found it. She doesn't know why. Why would someone leave a note on this particular tree anyway?

(it couldn't have possibly been meant for her?)

Clarke goes through the rest of her day, tries to act normal. Three more people have become sick from eating greens from a particular plant. She finds the remains, and draws a careful record. Octavia comes to ask her if there's anything she can take for her pregnancy nausea, and Clarke gives her some mint leaves to make into tea. 

She goes over the inventory of the medical supplies. They keep getting smaller and smaller. 

She tries to ignore the note.

But her gut (and her heart) keep leading her back to the tree. 

And the notes keep coming. 

Sometimes Clarke writes back. Sometimes she tucks them deep in her pockets and takes them home, showing no one.

Once it's not a note, but a ring of flowers, linked together end to bud. Clarke doesn't understand the significance, but appreciates it none the less. She leaves in return, a drawing of a young fawn (she omits the mutated split face).

It's strange, but it does brighten her day. The words are a comfort. Both the lyrics themselves, the bits of remembered Earth verse that still strike a chord, and the notes that always seem to be waiting for her. She'll take it now. 

"Are you OK?" her mother asks one day, when they're clearing out the med tent. 

Clarke forces her face into something neutral. "Yeah mom, I'm fine". 

"It's just, you've seemed so lost lately. Not really sad, but..."

Clarke shrugs. "It doesn't feel like I have a place here anymore. Everyone else has their jobs, and it seems like everyone else has taken a part of mine, and I'm left with nothing. It's not that I miss being at war, or the constant death and fear for everyone's life, but I guess...I miss being needed. There are other healers, and other people leading, not it seems like all I can do is wander."

"Hey" Abby says, touching Clarke on the cheek "Need may be questionable, but never doubt there are plenty of people around here who want you". 

It doesn't change the urge deep in her gut. 

After several months, the notes start to take a different direction. 

"I have a sad story to tell you/all down by the moonlight alone". 

"And all the night's magic seems to whisper and hush/And all the soft moonlight seems to shine in your blush". 

"let the midnight special/shine her light on me"

The last one has a crude question mark scrawled on the back. 

And Clarke does. She slips out of her tent in the dark of night. The settlement's night guards are almost laughably easy to evade. Nothing spare a few dangerous animals have tried to get near for some time.

The clearing looks different in the moonlight. In the day, it's plain. Dried grass and a scattering of trees. In the night, it's almost breathtaking. In the light, the foliage shines, and appears soft and inviting. A handful of the night-blooming bioluminescent flowers grows at the base of the tree. 

Clarke sits at the base of her tree, cross legged. And waits.

For quite a while it seems. 

Just when part of her brain is starting to say "this is stupid what the hell are you still doing here", there's a noise at the edge of the clearing. 

She is dressed plainly, free of face paint, hair only loosely braided. While Clarke doubts the woman is genuinely unarmed, she carries no sword, no bow. 

He head is ducked low. Her movements cautious. 

Clarke has pictured how this meeting could go a million times. She expected anger. Anger, rage, wrath. She expected to be pulled to violence, to yelling and maybe even a little crying. Secretly, she knew to expect a little heartache. She expected the feelings to explode out of her every pore, to overwhelm her, as they had the day she left her by the mountain. 

Instead, she just feels...confused. 

Words float around in her head. Angry words, hurt words, accusatory ones. 

All that comes out is a brusque, 

"Commander". 

She approaches more slowly. The closer she gets, Clarke can see the lines around her eyes that weren't there before. It's not even been two years. Clarke wonders what peace time has done to herself as well. 

The other woman shakes her head softly, slumping down at the base of the tree.

"Not here Clarke, never here". 

Clarke sighs and shuts her eyes. She doesn't understand how she got here, to this place. 

"Why are you here Lexa?" 

There's a pause. 

"I wanted to see if you would come". 

Another pause. "Please tell me there's not someone else coming from somewhere else to attack us." 

"No"

Clarke tilts her head back up against the trunk of the tree, staring at the stars through the forest canopy. 

"Well that's good, because we are really not prepared for anything now". 

She thinks of their tiny security force, trained by a motley crew of the imprisoned and disgraced. 

Lexa sighs deeply. "The mountain men are gone. The alliance between the twelve clans is holding. There are no new threats or dangers. This is as close to peace as I have ever known". 

She tucks her knees up to her chest, seemingly making herself small. 

"I never thought I would have to lead during a time like this...I thought..."

"That it would be easy? Yeah, you would think so" 

"Suddenly all the problems you have to deal with seem so small and ridiculous..."

"Yeah, my mom just had to mediate an argument between two guys over where they were each allowed to hang their clotheslines". 

"And sometimes it seems like nothing I do is good enough for anyone". 

Clarke cocks her head to look at Lexa. 

"A world like this, you would think that dealing with just getting food and shelter and the changing seasons would be enough". 

Lexa struggles out a laugh. "My people are far more used to this world than yours Clarke. The laws and customs governing those things would continue easily with or without me". 

There's silence again for a minute. 

"I guess I should say thank you. For letting the others disappear with the poison."

Lexa lets her gaze slide to her feet. If Clarke didn't know better, she would think she looked ashamed. 

"That was reckless of me. That poison is one of our most closely guarded weapons. I would have never even risked using it on the mountain until I saw Echo looking for it, it's so unpredictable."

"Wow, the trigedakru really don't know how to accept a thank you". 

"It could have been a disaster, but I let her take it. I let them all go because my heart refused to let you and your people go it alone. I couldn't have kept Echo and the others if I had tried. But instead of trying I aided them. It was foolish". 

"It's...a little late for take backs now Lexa". 

Lexa's expression is stalwart, but sorrowful. 

"I don't regret my decision. I regret the pain it has caused you, and the lives of your people it must have cost. But my duty is to my people first, and I was able to take all of them home with no blood spilled. I cannot regret that". 

Clarke is silent for a long time, before saying quietly. 

"I can't believe I'm saying this...but if it makes you feel any better we only lost a couple of people. "

"The story of the Mountain Men's defeat has swept through the land. Everyone knows the story of Clarke of the Skaikru, who led her people to victory against a most feared of enemy, even after being abandoned". 

"That story leaves a lot of the details out". 

"But it ensures that you and your people's power is respected. Legends have a power little can match." 

"Is that why you came here Lexa? To tell me that my people and I are becoming legends?"

Lexa fixes her with a strange look, one that Clarke can't seem to read.

"I came here because I felt the need to let down my burdens for a night. I am not commander to the trees, the beasts do not call me Heda." 

Her expression twists into one of bizarre, faraway, tenderness. 

"I thought that you might understand". 

Clarke doesn't know what to say. Because she does understand, even as bitter as that understanding is. She remembers the pressure, the duty. She remembers lying awake at night fearing. She remembers the times, having to step outside of herself to become the person her people needed to be. Ignoring the parts that screamed "no" for the part that quietly reasoned "yes". 

And as bitter as it feels, she understands that that too is what Lexa had to do to betray them.

Clarke turns her head. Her and Lexa's faces are unusually close. She feels familiar heat erupt in her chest. 

Quietly, she asks. 

"Who are you out here Lexa?" 

She can feels Lexa's breath on her cheek, they're so close. She didn't really expect an answer, and no more words are exchanged.

A moment of infinitesimal forever passes, and then they are kissing. Lexa's mouth slides over Clarke's, as soft and careful as their first. Despite the situation, there is a sense of peace in their actions. There is comfort, and understanding in their embrace. These are feelings that Clarke is sure will never leave this clearing. 

The moon is high, and reflects brightly off their bodies as the two quietly shed their clothing. Laid bare before Clarke, Lexa is a map of tattoos and scars criss crossing across expanses of sun darkened skin. She wonders how her unmarked skin looks to Lexa. If she looks untouched, or childish. Maybe she knows that she wears her scars on the inside. Clarke trails her fingers alone the lines formed. Whatever her life is or isn't right now, Lexa is here. Here, soft under her fingers, warm under her tongue, and smiling. Smiling at her, for her. 

Later, when she's spread out on the grass, Lexa on her side, leaning over her, fingers doing beautiful things between her thighs, and Clarke is at ease. Her world maybe not be perfect, her own mind may not be calm, even her relationship with Lexa may not be whole again, but this here, this night, this clearing, this is good. This is perfect. 

Then Lexa twists her fingers deep inside her, and Clarke stops thinking at all.

After, they stay wrapped together, barely chilled by the night air. 

Clarke lets out a laugh. Lexa, who has been running a finger along her collarbone, asks

"Is there something you find amusing sky girl?"

Clarke lets her head flop back to stare at the stars. "It just occurred to me that so much from the earth before has survived. Every single note you left me? I knew them all. Music, it's just so strange sometimes."

"Music and song are important to us too Clarke. They tell stories of who we are and who we were."

"You almost sounded like Dante Wallace for a moment there".

Lexa frowns. "Do not confuse our attitudes. We preserve through memory and telling. The mountain men sought to protect things. They confused the physical objects of art with the meaning they carried for the people". 

"What does 'Starry Night' mean to someone who's never seen the stars" Clarke muses quietly. 

Lexa scoots closer, to nudge her nose against the side of Clarke's neck. 

Softly, she remarks, "I suppose we will have to part soon".

Clarke clings to her a little tighter "Back to our own homes, our people. God, I can't even promise my people wouldn't shoot you on sight".

Lexa ducks her gaze towards the ground. "I cannot say you would be welcomed back with the trigedakru either". 

"The others who helped us...they all made it out okay. They're..." Clarke pauses "They're all alive."

"They would not be welcomed back either. The others would view them as traitors". 

"They haven't exactly been accepted with us either. I mean, Octavia would throw down with anyone who messed with Lincoln, but she can't defend them all." 

She fixes Lexa's gaze. "Would you really regard them all as traitors if they chose to return? Even though you helped them escape?"

"It would be the others judgement, not mine, to worry about. Even if I were able to pardon their transgressions, I could not promise that the others would not turn on me." 

She looks away again. "Some have already accused me of having gone soft by forming the alliance in the first place. Willingly allowing the return of those considered exiled might be enough to tip them over. And if they knew I had knowingly allowed..." 

Clarke moves her lips closer to Lexa's cheek. Close enough to touch, but she does not. 

"They would see your acts as one's of weakness. Weakness, just like me." 

There is another long silence, before Lexa changes the subject. 

"Winter is coming. What will you do for shelter?"

Clarke sighs. 

"Last year we took shelter in the shell of Mount Weather with the remaining residents who still can't go outside. I know that's what most expect us to do again."

She shakes her head. 

"I hated it down there. That entire place just feels like a giant grave. And it's not just me. Some of the others who had been captives had panic attacks when we went back down last year. I've been trying to convince people we should try to hike back to where the Ark went to ground. It was very well insulated, and we could use the trip to salvage some more of the materials and components from the wreckage..."

Clarke turns to study Lexa's face.

"Do you think that would work? Would the other clans allow us to pass?"

"You underestimate the power legend can have Clarke. As far as anyone else knows, Clarke kom Skaikru was betrayed, then entered the mountain and conquered it with almost no blood shed. I daresay there is anywhere in this land you could travel and be opposed". 

Clarke snorts. 

"Some legend. It probably doesn't mention that the vast majority of us spent the entire battle flat on our backs wishing we were dead."

"The mountain men, with their fog and their reapers, plagued this area for a hundred years, and you took them down. People need to believe in things sometimes, and if they choose to make myth of the events, then it shall happen."

As the night grows deeper, the two reluctantly separate and slip back into their clothes. 

Lexa asks, with what still feels like uncharacteristic vulnerability, "will I see you again? If I left another message, would you come?" 

A rush of tenderness flows through Clarke. But that tenderness is still tempered by memories of pain. 

She steps forward and kisses Lexa carefully. 

"I don't know if I could ever trust you with my life again. I know I could never make another political agreement without one eye cast behind your back."

She runs her fingers along the length of Lexa's arm. 

"But I am beginning to think I could trust you with my heart".

She feels her heart tug in her chest as she leans to whisper in her ear. 

"Winter's coming soon. It won't really be safe to come out here soon. Leave me something to keep me warm?"

The smile Lexa gives her is almost enough to do just that. 

And so they separate, going back to their mutual camps. Clarke tries to make sure to brush the grass out of her hair and the dirt off her clothes before laying down to bed. 

In the end, she does convince a small group of the others to come with her to the remains of Camp Jaha. Lincoln and Octavia, who don't want their child to be born underground. Maya, who never wants to go back to where she was born. Bellamy, him too haunted by the ghosts of what happened in the mountain. 

He actually comments when she tells him who else is coming "What's been up with you lately? It's like you've gotten your fire back". 

Clarke shakes her head. 

"I guess I've just caught a bug or something". 

When she gets a few moments to herself, Clarke works on the parting gift she plans to leave in the clearing. That night is already starting to feel like a dream. 

When Lexa's rolled up scroll appears, its the same day that Clarke finishes her drawing. It's a sketch of her memory of that night, of the ghost of Lexa's fingers on her skin. She'd almost blushed herself to death drawing it. 

Lexa's is not nearly as racy, but it does it's job and warms Clarke to the core. 

"Hear the wind blow, dear, hear the wind blow/Hang your head over, hear the wind blow...If you don't love me, love whom you please,/Throw your arms round me, give my heart ease". 

She tucks it carefully into her coat to carry it with her when she leaves with the others.

**Author's Note:**

> Songs used in this chapter in order:
> 
> -The Circle Game, written by Joni Mitchell  
> -Bridge Over Troubled Water, written by Paul Simon  
> -Meet me by the Moonlight, traditional  
> -Moondance, written by Van Morrison  
> -The Midnight Special, traditional  
> -Down in the Valley, traditional  
> -


End file.
